AU not always gold

The African Union summit ended with little fanfare Tuesday, as these meetings often do. The world was waiting for the assembled leadership to condemn Robert Mugabe's stranglehold on Zimbabwe and no one budged. Mugabe himself was clearly rattled by the media attention but African leaders are loath to call out the man they've been hailing as a post-colonial hero for the last 20 years. And with food security rather far down the agenda, it seems that the African Union is settling in for another year of toothless, disinterested bureaucracy.

International summits such as this will continue to become the norm and that's fine, these institutions are generally useless but they're probably better than nothing. But hailing them as progress will get more disillusioning with each year that passes. The African Union passed up a golden opportunity to announce itself as an anti-dictator organ. Maybe next time.

Of course, the danger with anti-Mugabe rhetoric (PBS Newshour Transcipt about Mugabe) is that Tsangerai will get elevated to genius/humanitarian of the African continent and everybody looks the other way while he butchers his people. The stage is set for a worldwide figure to emerge from sub-Saharan world, is Tsangerai that guy? While I certainly don't mind an international overthrow of Mugabe, I agree that unilateral force would be counterproductive. Multilateral force might be inspirational but I'm not holding my breath.